Corrine Sparks

Corrine Etta Sparks is a Canadian judge. She was the first Black Canadian woman to become a judge in Canada, and the first black judge in the province of Nova Scotia. Her decision in the case R v S (RD), which was controversially overturned on appeal, was later upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in a leading decision on reasonable apprehension of bias.

Education Sparks is from the area around Loon Lake, Nova Scotia, which is a historically racially segregated community. She was descended both from Black Loyalists and from Black Refugees to Nova Scotia.

After graduating from Dalhousie Law School, Sparks entered private legal practice in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, where she worked in family law. Her Masters Thesis studied the relocation and compensation of residents of Halifax's Africville, J. Michael MacDonald, the Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, has noted that at the time of Sparks's appointment, the Canadian court system was slowly becoming more representative of local communities under the relatively new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Crown appealed Sparks's decision, focusing their case on the possible apprehension of bias, asserting that as a black Nova Scotian Sparks may have been biased towards the black Nova Scotian defendant. The appeal was initially successful, and Sparks's decision was overturned by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, but the case was taken up by the Supreme Court of Canada who in 1997 reversed the decision by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal and restored Sparks's original decision. Hutchinson and Strachan wrote that the case functions "as a springboard" for understanding the connection between a judge's interpretation and their identity in their legal decision-making.

Sparks was a 2015 inductee of the Bertha Wilson Honour Society, which recognises alumni of the Schulich School of Law, in honour of Bertha Wilson, the first woman on the Ontario Court of Appeal and the first female Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Sparks has also received the Lillian Fish Award from the National Association of the Women and the Law, as well as awards from the Elizabeth Fry Society, the Canadian Bar Association, and The Congress of Black Women.

In 2026, she was named as an Officer of the Order of Canada. She lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.